Day 2 in Shanghai

After trudging around Shanghai for something like eight hours, my beloved New Balance hiking shoes became my arch enemies (pun intended!) My weary, jet lagged legs could no longer function and I wanted to kill my shoes. Every step was making me think of the poor bound-footed Chinese women of the past. (OK, I exaggerate a bit and don’t do justice to the true torture those women had to bear, but this is my blog and I’m a know exaggerator.)

We finally made it to the apartment after a stop for some takeout dumplings (delicious of course) And after taking off those traitorous shoes, we decided to take a short nap, maybe an hour or so. Eight hours later at 11:45 pm, we woke  up feeling somewhat better. Svend had set an alarm, but we totally ignored that. SO now at midnight we played cards, watched boring news, read and went back to sleep until 8 AM. Now we had a handle on the jet lag and were able to venture out again. In my new favorite and much lighter Sketchers, trusty umbrella, scarf of course and sensible rain coat, I was ready for day two. Back to the happening spot - the People’s Park, where we picked up tickets to see the Peking Opera that night (more about the PO later) and then hopped back on the sightseeing bus.

There is a section of the city called Yun Yuan which is a place where several hundred years ago, a devoted son built beautiful gardens for his aging parents, complete with many charming pagodas to rest or read or do whatever it is aging parents do. In our kid’s case they hop on a plane and visit other peoples' ancient gardens. The rock gardens here were so beautiful, complete with caves that were maybe cooler in the summer for the aging parents? There was even an impressive thousand year old jade rock. t was truly a lovely oasis in that huge city.

The area around the gardens have been built up into a modern day Mecca for shoppers complete with a Starbucks and a KFC (I know, I don’t like it either, but we have been lured into a Starbucks for decent coffee a couple of times) There was also a crooked bridge that led to a tea house where only the foreign travelers seemed to visit. The natives were too smart to fall for the overblown prices, but it was nevertheless worth it have jasmine ginseng tea with the quirky little “tea snacks” that accompanied it (small tea quail eggs, kumquats covered in something good (not the official name of that delicacy) a sweet tofu thing and some peanuts, definitely peanuts..I’m pretty sure.

I must comment on the 27 million people's ability to get around especially via the subway system. It's absolutely amazing! Somehow, the literally thousands of people get through turnstiles, go up and down stairs, get on and off trains in what seems like a choreographed march - and may I add, a large majority of them are watching something on their phones -movies, tv shows, pictures of their kids - something. Those who are not actively watching something have earbuds in and might be talking to someone or listening to music. It is truly a small minority who are not attached to a phone. The trains are frequent, there are signs on the floors that help organize which way everyone should go. Everything is very well marked, color coded, modern and efficient, at least where we were. Yes, there are people walking in front of you and no one ever says, "excuse me" or anything like that, but one must not get annoyed with that, it's their way and if you go with the flow - it really works fine.

Okay, now I must describe the Peking Opera. I was very excited that we were lucky to be in Shanghai when there was a performance. I have heard about the Peking Opera, seen vague snippets or perhaps parodies of it before, so was happy to see the real thing. The Si Yu theater was wonderful, spacious seating with a good view from the entire hall. The lights stay up through the performance, The costumes were splendid, which is an old fashioned adjective, but perfect to describe the whole scene. The acting seemed wonderful, even without knowing a single word being said. Now about the music…a cacophony of cats!!! This phase popped into my head and I couldn’t shake it. The band was the leader of this dissonance. Their job was to punctuate the action with some annoying sounding notes. Then on occasion go into a full blown all-instrument dissonance. The female lead -a  beautiful woman in a stunning robe with sleeves that went way below the wrists and with some seemingly slight of hand the sleeved folded up to wrist length, then down again no doubt in synch with the action of the unknown story. This she did well, but sing? I’m 100% sure the Asian audience loved her performance, but to me she sounded, not only like a cat, but a weird cat. Now the second male lead also had a weird voice, but it went up and down in range and sometimes matched what my ears like to hear. (I know this all sounds xenophobic or what ever cool word we use for racist, but I can’t help it and again, my blog -oh right and Svend’s too. I know he would agree with me if he knew what cacophony meant!) -yust yoking...

My favorite character was the emperor/warlord/mayor of the town; or whoever he was. Also splendid robes and a killer perfectly square grey beard that went to about his knees. A fabulous presence on the stage with lots of meaningful shakes and shrugs and prancing about in those mandarin platform shoes. His assistant or maybe second in command had what looked like wired bee’s wings on his back, which I would loved to have know why, but alas don’t. I know the play had to do with a sword because it was in the title, one showed up on the stage, later was stolen by a ninja looking character and then used by soldiers to kill the guy with the up and down vocal range. I was kind of wishing it was used on the orchestra. 

    Now you might think this review would mean I don’t recommend a Peking Opera, but quite the opposite! It was a wonderful experience and only my lack of refinement and education made me not appreciate the cacophony - I mean music.

Enough for now, I'm boring myself -I'm trying to add pictures, but there is a challenge trying to coordinate iCloud or even getting to Google (have to use Google Hong Kong) Ta ta for now..